Polyrhythm
by Netbug-Archive
Summary: A collection of unrelated one shots scattered around the Cars universe. Some Mater/Holley. Lightning/Sally later. Other pairings warned for by story.
1. quote Date unquote

**Polyrhythm**

A/N: Because all the cool kids are naming their one shot collections after songs these days.

And yeah, I'm still working on _The First Date_. Sorry about the slow. Middles are the hardest I tell you.

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><p>MaterHolley

"**Date"**

That amused smile hadn't gone away. There had been plenty of time between when Mater had introduced them and now for Finn to have stopped smirking as they traveled towards Paris, but the oldest member of the trio continued to give Holley the same look as she explained the statistics of the mission.

"...What?"

"Well, Miss Shiftwell, I suppose I never took Agent Mater as your type."

She scowled, but Finn didn't falter like she'd hoped he would. "As a matter of fact, he's _not_."

"Then how _did_ you wind up as Mater's 'date', as he put it?"

Why did spies have to know everything? Daft question, Holley knew; spies were conditioned to be nosy. But Finn didn't need to look like he was getting so much schadenfreude out of her ordeal.

And it was an ordeal.

She looked over at Mater messing around with the buttons on his seat as she tried to figure out how to tell the story she was doomed to recollect.

A huge ordeal.

He ended up spinning in circles with the wrong push. Like a kid.

A horrible ordeal.

He had stopped freaking out and was now having fun with getting sick in his chair. She tried not to laugh, which should have been an easier task than it was, since he wasn't cute and it wasn't funny.

She turned back to Finn in one quick swerve, like she had just whipped a thought out of her mind.

"I _don't_ want to talk about it."

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><p>AN: I'd noticed how amused Finn looked when Mater had introduced Holley as his date, and I couldn't let go of this idea.

There's something about Finn as a shipper on deck that I really like. I have yet another idea involving that for later.

(By the way, I'm afraid to say "requests are open" because that would imply that I will for sure complete anything asked of me, but "suggestions are welcome." If an idea sparks me I'll probably write it, with credit to whoever suggested it of course.)

(And last off, I added a link to my homepage on my profile. It's shiny and links to a lot of cool stuff, so give it a look!)


	2. Classified

Mater/Holley

**Classified**

But most often, she'd send him letters.

Letters without a return address or even a postmark, written on some high tech paper that would begin squawking about spontaneous combustion as he was reaching the last paragraph.

10.

9.

Uhp. Hold on, there...

8.

7.

6.

Aaaaaand...

5.

4.

Done! He'd toss the paper out of his garage and 3, 2, 1, 0! A tourist jumped five feet in the air at the sound of a small explosion near a towing and salvage shop that looked even more rustic than the rest of the town. But he'd already adjusted to the sound and had moved on, adding to his mental list of things he wanted to tell her. Replies he wanted to give her the next time he could see her face or even know her location to write back.

...Whenever that'd be.


	3. Ignition

Mater/Hol- why am I even warning for this. It shows up in like all my stories. It'd be easier to warn for fics where there's NO M/H.

**Ignition**

It wasn't every day a rusty tow truck like him got to go to a party like this. The lights danced in a plethora of neon colors against the contrasting ground, bouncing off the metallic statues that Mater had overheard some other cars saying was the "art" that made this place at "art museum." (He didn't know art could spin around like that!) The food was strange, unique, delicious, and something he had no plans to go near _ever again_.

And then there was the Jaguar he'd just passed.

The Jaguar that was heading back in his direction.

"H-Hello."

She was stuttering. Was she shy? Shy around _him?_ And then it hit the truck; there was the slightest chance that a car was actually interested in _him. _A car that was really, _really _beautiful.

And Mater's new goal for the evening became helping the shy lady loosen up a little and have a conversation. He wiggled his eyebrows.

"Why _helllllo!_"

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><p>AN: This was inspired by an interview with Mr. Cable Guy, where he commented that Mater was excited that a girl was actually interested in him. Or so Mater thought.

For the record, I love minimalist sculptures. I just imagine Mater being more traditional/not understanding how something like that could be considered art.

I am so proud that I didn't name this ficlet "Start". That would have been stupid.


	4. Brakes

Mater/Holley

**Brakes**

It wasn't every day a technical agent like her had to go on a mission like this. Then again, waiting around on the floor had been tremendously boring. She'd finished calculated the details of the lightning to make sure none of the "lights" were hidden cameras and had been forced to actually mingle. Small talk was not the friend of a scientist, and she'd heard it all before. Weather. Sports. Pick up lines scrapped off cheaply coded websites with Comic Sans font everywhere.

And then there was the American agent.

The American agent that she really, really wanted to let drive away.

Even after Finn had reassured her, the phrase "this cannot be him" kept playing in her mind as she trudged over to the tow truck. She found the field agents to be strange enough when their cover wasn't so... so... American. So incredibly American that she hardly even believed it was American. So American that it became a parody of itself.

"H-Hello."

He replied by wiggling his eyebrows at her, and unlike so many other situations where flirting had been the best option to contact another agent, for some reason she couldn't tell if this car was being serious.

If she was any other car in any other profession, she'd insist this was a joke.

"Why _helllllo!_"

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><p>AN: Companion to _Ignition_! :D


	5. Five Times Holley Wasn't A Spy: One

A/N: Darnit Mighty ANT, we had a brainwave. Now it looks like I'm copying you doing a five times thing. XD

But I've actually had this idea for a few days, so there. :T

(Not that I haven't been writing down the ideas/suggestions I've gotten from readers. Feel free to keep sending them. I'll actually write them as the muse strikes.)

Also... I've decided to stop warning for canon pairings like Lightning/Sally and Mater/Holley. Most of my fics involve one or the other and it just seems silly to me. I added a warning to the summary up front.

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><p><strong>Five Times Holley Shiftwell Wasn't a Spy<strong>

**One**

She wasn't a spy when she had Professor Zundapp in front of her.

Her equipment would argue otherwise – her wings were holding stable with her thrusters and her taser gun was buzzing – but a real spy always remained calm, focussed, and professional.

Holley wasn't calm. Her oil was boiling under her frame.

Holley wasn't focussed. The beeps and boops from the detonator near her enemy seemed much louder in her mind than they could have possibly been in reality, reminding her constantly who the detonation signal was targeted at.

And Holley most certainly wasn't professional. She didn't want to save the world, the race, or any of the things her mission had started out about saving. All Holley wanted was to see the car that had strapped a bomb to Mater out like a light on the floor of his little climate-controlled box.

And while she didn't get exactly what she wanted, the look of fear on Zundapp's face and he turned and tried to make a break for it was oh so satisfying. Her new desire became crashing through the box after him, but this was even less practical, so she begrudgingly started her way around the side before hearing a command from her partner.

"Holley, I'll get Zundapp! _You help Mater!_"

She wasn't a spy when she accepted her new orders, either.

"Got it!"


	6. Five Times Holley Wasn't A Spy: Two

**Five Times Holley Shiftwell Wasn't a Spy**

**Two**

"Mater!"

And for two seconds, she wasn't a spy. She was just a car whose friend was about to explode before her.. Whose friend was staring down Axelrod with a crazy theory that she hardly understood.

(Why had she listened to him when he'd told her to show the picture in the first place? That picture was supposed to be classified and Mater had no clearance to reveal it, so why-)

He was _right_.

She remembered how to breathe, but remembering how to be a spy would take a little longer as she gawked at one uncharacteristically smug tow truck.

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><p>AN: 100 Words exactly. I like writing drabbles; it's been a while since I made my last one. :D


	7. 3am Tokyo

**A/N: **Humanized.

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><p><strong>3am Tokyo<strong>

In a small office space about one of Tokyo's many convenience stores – known to a select few as C.H.R.O.M.E.'s Tokyo outpost – Holley Shiftwell went through the day's last set of diagnostics results, illuminated only by the computer screen before her. Although Holley had officially been transferred to the field more than two months ago, her senior partner had his solo mission from time to time, and the technical department would swarm her with contractor offers. So for a couple of days while Finn was undercover, she'd trade in her exciting life for a pair of old shorts and a t-shirt promoting some giant robot anime she'd never seen and would never have time to see. Like most Japanese shirts, it was a bit short on her.

Holley never jumped between her two lives – she tripped. Her fingers had adapted to sleek touchscreens and didn't feel right clacking at the technical department's less aesthetically pleasing but just as reliable desktop keyboards. She squirmed in her seat after the first 30 minutes, expecting her plane to land or her train to arrive. Her thin purple hair was held back by a cloth headband she kept in her lunch-bag rather than 20 itchy hairpins. Her pores that had been stuffed with makeup could actually _breathe _now.

Parched from the heat of the miniature server farm behind the workstations, Holley took a swig from a bottle of "English Milk Tea" she'd brought with some snacks from the store below. Holley had purchased a bottle of the same tea when she'd first arrived in Tokyo to ebb her homesickness. It tasted _nothing_ like the tea back home, but she'd liked it anyway.

As Holley pulled a red bean bun from her bag to munch on with her drink, she tried to imagine being on the field as she was now, rather than sporting purple cocktail dresses or black stealth gear.

"Cherrio!"

Holley spit tea all over her keyboard at the door flying open and the accompanying greeting, and continued to cough as Finn danced past the server to her workstation. But even as she was hacking and trying to find a rag to dry off the keyboard, she could hear two sets of footsteps.

"Finn, she's chokin!"

Giving up on the rag, she turned to acknowledge Finn only to find her boyfriend two steps from giving her the Heimlich Maneuver.

"M-Mater! What are you doing here?"

"Aw good, yer alright!" Mater's expression jumped from concern to joy. "Yous sounded like you was chockin' fer a moment there!"

That was it: Holley was completely flabbergasted. Not only had Finn materialized without any prior warning, but Mater was here too, and she was wearing basketball shorts and no makeup whatsoever – a fact that she'd never imagined could make her so uncomfortable even in front of him. _Especially_ in front of him.

Mater didn't seem to notice anything different about Holley, though, as he scooped her out of her chair and trapped her in a bear hug. This only managed to embarrass the rookie agent further.

Finn's coy smile as he watched Holley turn bright red wasn't helping either.

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><p><strong>AN: **AKA 5 Times Holley Shiftwell Wasn't A Spy: The Third.

To be honest I don't really like Cars humanized fic most of the time, but I wanted to write this sort of character "sketch" of what I'd imagine a human Holley being like, since I've never seen much reference to her computer skills or Tokyo residency in anything. I'm not very good at description, so critique would be awesome.

If this hadn't been humanized I was going to make a horrible "Circle K-Car" convenience store joke, so at least you were all spared that.


End file.
